


Agape

by lemonsharks



Series: Every Terrible, Necessary Choice [3]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Almost Kiss, F/M, Post Act I, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 20:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4405907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the morning, both of them will remember and each will give the other the dignity of pretending they do not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agape

Hawke lingered at the Hanged Man.

She wasn't used to Hightown. She didn't think she ever would be. 

The ceilings at the Amell estate were high, the walls papered over in a pattern with gold leaf. There are fewer things to _do_ , for the time being. The people she would've turned to work work are giving her a wide berth now, and quiet in Kirkwall means the city itself wanted for very little more than ships and cargo and men enough to load them.

Her sister's absence curled into her skin every time she turned a corner, and every other word her mother said was how Bethany would have loved the garden. How she would have arranged their growing library a different way. How she should have a room, in case—well. How perhaps Hawke _should_ have taken her into the Deep Roads after all. 

How could she go back to that? She had no answer, no explanation, no reason why Bethany had done what she had. _Be careful. Stay safe._ But she'd done neither, and how had Hawke not seen every little thing that made her think the _Gallows_ a better option? Why choose that end when Hawke had a better one in the palm of her hand, one made of emerald set in gold, enough to buy them all the protection of _standing_ in this city?

She should hear her sister in the library, or practicing with her staff upstairs, or laughing with Mother and Bodahn and Sandal. Instead no one talked, not past the briefest pleasantries, and when her friends visited they all got out as soon as they could. And that was by day, with laughter and bargaining and criers drifting up through the windows. 

The closest to silent Lowtown ever got was the crash of waves against the pilings at the dock. Gulls crying, whores and con men selling their tricks. 

Even Isabela had left the table next to the bar, by now wishing her a good night with a pat on the head while she followed a very pretty elf up the stairs. Hawke rolled her head on her shoulders, laying a battered deck of cards out in a fortune-teller's spread. The thing had been marked and unmarked so many times you couldn't tell who was cheating or how with it. Except the priests, those were very nearly pristine.

Night got quiet in Hightown, no shrieks or shouts or moans, no slammed doors, no crack of a city guard's baton or sword or mace against bone or a building wall. Warning to settle down or be _made to_. Night in Hightown was cloying with blossom-heavy climbing vines and the Chanters up against the Chantry walls, never silent. The Chant didn't make it all the way down here, though if you stood in the _right_ alley at the right time of day you could catch a bit of the shade from the Alienage tree. 

Hawke regarded the bottom of her cup and blinked when she found it empty.

"Another hand?" she asked Varric, who'd gone and come back with a stick of charcoal and a sheaf of paper when she wasn't paying close attention. 

He'd taken the chair beside her and he finished scribbling out his line, tongue out between his lips. Hawke shuffled the cards and gave them over for him to deal. Varric shuffled them again.

"You settling in all right?"

She still turned for Gamlen's house when she turned for home, and he asked her now when everyone was gone. When he knew he'd get the truth out of her.

"Quite well. Well enough," she said. And she meant, _not at all._

"Maybe you just got used to being around here all the time."

"Maybe _you've_ grown accustomed to my presence."

He hadn't left after the expedition paid out, after all. Hadn't sent her on her way to do with her wealth what she would; he'd introduced her to a series of suspiciously honest investors because _you'd be surprised how fast you can spend a small fortune, Hawke._ And lingered with her, in the Hanged Man.

Varric dealt the cards, diamondback for two. 

She had a priest. 

"We're playing for bragging rights?"

"Are you that worried about your hand?"

"I—it's just so _quiet_ up there. Even Teryn thinks there's something wrong with the place and—"

"You're missing Sunshine," he said. "Can't say I know what that's like, but—"

"But you're _here_ ," Hawke said, and hauled out a limp grin. "I don't really need much else."

She took her card between her fingers and fluttered it back and forth like the wing of something small and fragile. 

"I _could_ move up to Hightown," he said, returning her grin and shuffling the deck for the second draw. "You might never see me again, once the Merchants' Guild found out. "

"Fewer sewers to slink down when you're being followed," she said. "Not enough alleys to dart down, and far too many high-and-mighties. You'd last about a week."

"I'm blown away by the faith you have in me, serah."

"I _could_ buy a block or two down here," she murmured, low, and Varric … shifted. Tightened and loosened; the corners of his eyes went like they did when he was cheating. 

He slid another card to her. Their elbows bumped. The side of his little finger touched hers atop the card. A king, good for a high card but shit with a priest. Story of her fucking life.

Hawke tried to focus on the backs of Varric's cards, tried remembering which smudges meant what value and suit, and came away with the conclusion that neither was a priest. That she liked his hands. 

_I am,_ Hawke thought _, quite drunk. Quite_ very _drunk._

The city bell struck three past midnight and that at least was the same at the Amell estate as here.

"Varric," she said, and looked up from her cards. 

He lay his face-up on the table, priestess and magician. Varric watched her with his head cocked to the side, almost resting on his shoulder. And she might lean forward. She might clap him on the shoulder in congratulations for the win. She might take his right hand, with the permanent ink stains on the first and second finger, with her left, palm to mirrored palm. Small as hers but stouter and cleverer.

She did not move, but neither did he, and the Hanged Man went about the dregs of the night's business around them.

His eyes never left hers, but his lips parted and then closed again. 

Hawke flicked her eyes down, to her cards. She flipped them over and pushed them forward. 

Spectacular, even in loss. 

Varric leaned back in his chair, grinning, when she looked up again. He balanced on the two back legs, and then leaned forward onto all four of them again, and gathered the cards.

“I should go,” she said, and thought, _Or I could stay_.

Hawke clamped her tongue between her teeth. 

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll walk you home.”

“Guest rooms’re finished,” she said, rising on wobbly legs. “They’re frilly, but it’ll save you the walk back. ”


End file.
